From time to time, I pick a martial art to study for a while. When I was a kid, it was Karate. When I was in college, it was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Later, it was Tae Kwon Do. And briefly, more recently, I’ve even dabbled in Tai Chi, Systema, and Aikido. Put them together, and I’ve spent more time studying martial arts & self-defense than most people with a post-graduate degree spent in college.
TKD was the only discipline I studied that offered the breaking of a board as a belt test requirement. This didn’t happen until the test for green belt. The belt level progression was white, orange, yellow, yellow-with-stripe, green (obviously there were many higher belts, but they don’t appear in this story). There were about six weeks in-between tests, and that’s only if you were taking as many classes as possible to hit the minimum number required for the next test. Which is what I had been doing.
The school sold plastic boards which break apart and reattach for practice purposes. I remembered my school days and the teachers who told us that the homework should be harder than the quizzes should be harder than the tests; in order to be fully prepared, you had to train harder than the challenge would require. With this in mind I bought the practice board with the highest possible strength, rated at 2¼ boards. Master Lee tried to discourage me from doing so. “What happens if you don’t break it?” he asked.
I could only think of one consequence, and it was acceptable. “It’ll hurt,” I said. Pain on my knuckles would heal, and the hands are far enough away from any major organ so I knew it wouldn’t ever risk my life. Of all the things I want to accomplish, only death would keep me from all of them. Because of this, I lose much of my fear for a thing if I’m convinced it’s not going to kill me.
Board breaks are tricky. Fear of pain can cause you to pull your punch so you don’t hit will full force. If you don’t go through the board, the energy you put toward it ricochets back into your hand. This hurts, and the harder you hit without breaking just makes it hurt more. But if you get all the way through, the energy transfers into the open space behind the board, and any pain is completely diminished by the flush of victory.
Now that I think about it, this is one of those transcendental truths that can be applied to any challenge.
By the time I was preparing for my green belt test, a new head instructor had been brought in to restructure things in order to maintain attendance and interest for the school. One of the changes he made was to introduce weapons, where I got to learn a little about how to use nunchaku and a katana. Totally sweet, but part of another story (I’ll tell that one later, it has a soundtrack and everything).
The day of my coveted green belt test was a little disappointing. Another major change Master Lee made to the school was that everyone, even the white belts, get to break a board. I had been training there for months, and yet my first board break wasn’t going to be any more special than those who had started just a few weeks before. Undaunted, I kept positive; this was still my first board break, and this test would still be important to me.
Part of the restructuring of the school also meant a streamlined test day. Previously the test days would take a few hours, but Master Lee brought that down to a total of about ninety minutes. Mostly the time was cut by allowing several students to perform their board break at the same time instead of one-by-one. I aided the process by holding the boards for other students, which is exciting in and of itself. When a nervous belt candidate is charging toward you to channel their effort and power and energy into destroying something you’re holding, it can be a challenge not to flinch. Even when you don’t, your fingertips occasionally get banged from a poorly aimed strike.
But when that board snaps, everyone in the room relaxes and swells with encouragement and pride. Holding the broken pieces, there’s a smell of sawdust which adds to the coolness factor. It’s a great feeling for everyone involved.
It was a particularly large number of people testing that day – more than forty. Even with four or five people doing their breaks at once, it still took some time to get through everyone. I kept moving around helping others, being one with enough physical strength and confidence to hold a board steady.
Finally it came to be my turn to break. I went to the stack of 12” squares of wood in the corner and chose one at random. I put faith that they were all pretty much the same, but Master Lee grabbed a different board and handed it to me. I was sure he thought I had made a bad choice, and I tried to ponder whether he was handing me what he thought would be an easier board to break, or a harder one. What he said was, “Do two.” Wha… woah.
I walked over to the instructors who would be holding the boards for me and saw several raised eyebrows. “You’ve never broken a board before, have you?” one of them asked.
“No Sir.”
“Then why do you have two boards?” I felt like a child with his hand in the cookie jar. He wasn’t being rude or cynical, but something about the demeanor of a high level black belt can turn “What are you doing?” into “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?!” I gaped a little, unable to think of anything to say. I turned to Master Lee, who waved his assent.
“He’s fine, he can do two,” he said, exhibiting as much confidence as if he’d been asked whether I could walk across the room without falling down. Ironically, at that moment, I’m not sure I could have.
Four men held the boards for me. I got into my stance and lined up the edge of my hand with the center of the board. I tried to concentrate, but my awareness was brought to exactly who was holding the boards; it was our four highest ranked instructors, aged men of 3rd to 5th degree black belts. Each man was giving me the Thousand Yard Stare. For a moment I wondered if they would remove my heart and place it on a scale opposite a feather…
…then I noticed the utter silence in the room. I was the only student left to test, and all eyes in the room were on me. Every instructor. Every student. Every student’s friend or family member who had come to share in the victories that day. There was I, about to do what no previous student had been allowed or expected to do on his first board break.
I quivered. I recovered. I focused. I took two practice swings for the purpose of aiming. I felt and noted the necessary motion in my arm, made certain I could duplicate the motion with the necessary force.
“Permission to break, Sir?”
“Permission granted.”
Something in my head shifted, and my world became gray. My emotions and intellect dissolved. I became a being whose Sole Purpose On Earth was to drive the edge of my hand downward and bring it back again. The presence of two planks of wood in the path of my hand was cursory. I took a breath. In the smallest fraction of time, my arm snapped forward and back like a whip. There was a loud crack, and the smell of sawdust.
I had broken both boards. First try. The room erupted in applause and cheers.
Later I was approached by Roger, the instructor I had worked with most closely. “I saw that look of surprise on your face when your hand when through those boards,” he said.
Flushed with victory, I let my usual respect and decorum slip a little. “Damn right you, did!” I told him. He smiled, and clapped a congratulatory hand on my shoulder. To this day, it’s one of the proudest moments of my life.
I still have those boards on a shelf at home. They sit flat with the edges facing outward, a jagged gap parting them down the middle like a dark lightening strike. For a time I considered writing the date on them to help me remember that day, but I never did.
And I’ve never needed to.
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